Category: Colorless Writings (Page 3 of 3)

Colorless writings, part 5 – The Bypass Surgery

Bypass surgery? Are you referring to bypass systems found in pedals?

You got that right. True-bypass seems to many as a something that will make them play better. I thought i’d like open up and let you know what i think about different bypass and switching methods. From outside, sort of generalizing, there are just couple of ways to create bypass switching on a effect pedal. We all do want to have bypass option on our pedals, right? At least i do. The unusable options are mechanical switches that have input of the circuit connected all the time. This method always results is this mythical “tone sucking” that so many of you are talking about around the internet. I haven’t come accross any modern pedal, boutique or factory made, that would use this method as main bypass switching, so we can safely leave that be. The usual two ways are magical “true bypass” that will set you free and save the world from certain death and the “buffered bypass” that is demon’s work and will *always* suck your signal dry before it hits the amplifier’s high impedance input. Or that’s exactly how i’ve seem people act on this issue.

Let’s start with the myths about true bypass. It will not make you play better, nor will it save the world. It’s just a method that will let your signal travel through the pedal without touching any part of the circuit. Yes, there are things that are good with this method. First of all, it doesn’t change the impedance of your signal when effect is not engaged. This means that your signal will travel happily in tact from your guitar to your amplifier. In addition, i can quickly think of two things that are not so good.

  1. Switches may be and are unreliable
  2. The lack of buffering will have your signal travel through 6 metres of guitar cable -> pedalboard with about 20 connections -> another 6 metres of guitar cable

No matter what you say. The standard 3PDT stomp switch used in almost every single boutique pedal will at least once or twice in its life span leave one or more of the poles unconnected. This usually fixes itself on the next stomp, but it is still very annoying.  It’s not the matter of build quality of these switches, but a simple fault in a way switches work. Many modern factory pedals are also using 3PDTs or 4PDTs as stomp switches – because it is hip to have this mythical thing called “True-Bypass”. Old school 2PDTs are known to be more reliable, but they limit switching options and usually leave the LED indicator out. Or address the issue in some other manner.

The example above leaves you with approx. 15 metres of guitar cable between your guitar and your amplifier. There are many jack/plug connections on the way too. Do you really think your signal generated by the guitar is strong enough to travel that many connections and that much cable without being degraded? Didn’t think so. This is what makes true bypass bad. You’ll have to rely on your cable quality and the connections on pedals.

So you’re saying that true bypass is a bad thing?!?

Oh yes i am. The impedance is the key. Guitar output impedance (or Z, or AC resistance) is always low in Ohms. Usually around a few thousand Ohms, less than 10K. The next item that takes the signal in will need to have a high impedance to catch the signal and pass it on. Usual amplifiers and pedals have input impedance from around 500K (which is lowish) to 1M Ohms (which is good) and up. Longer the cable, higher the output impedance for your guitar’s signal. Two six meter cables and and a pedalboard seems like quite standard setup for many. In this setup your signal can be degraded before hitting the amp due to long cables and lots of connections in the way.

Now let’s think about putting a simple buffer in there, middle of the pedal board. Buffers are just very simple semiconductor devices that transform the impedance back to low value and still keeping the signal in tact. If we have one of those in the middle of the chain, we’ve basically cut the cable lenght in half. The guitar “sees” the high impedance input of a buffer after first six meters of cable. The amp “sees” the low output impedance coming from the buffer’s output and percieves that as only 6 metres of cable. Good buffers can push you through even considerably longer cables without a problem.

So you’re saying buffered bypass is a good thing?

Yes and no. Like most things in life, it is just not that simple. Well designed bufferes are always more than welcome to my pedal board. Bad designs with even worse electronics switching.. Not that much.

The other reason for buffered bypass (or buffered pedals in general) is the electronic switching. As the JFET switching will need at least reference voltage of ~4.5V to work, the designers can’t just take the input to JFET switching “buffer” – that would take the voltage to the pickups, and that’s not what we ordered. So there needs to be a buffer to separate (or decouple) the input, JFET electronic switching and the next phase, which is either output buffer or the effects circuit. On the other view, some otherwise perfectly working circuits will need an input buffering to get the incoming signal just right. If there isn’t input buffering, the too low input impedance will cause something called “pickup loading”. In essence, it means that the guitar pickups are giving out too hign output impedance and the signal doesn’t get picked up by the circuit input well enough. Result will sound bad. Effects with too low input impedance do exist. And in numbers.

This brings us to the real issue and real practice. I don’t think that having true bypass in every single pedal in my board is good practice. Í also don’t think it’s a good idea to have in/out & bypass buffers in every pedal. Some sort of middle ground should be sufficient.

Does one exist?

Yeah. I think so. If you put your mind to it and think about how you want to build your pedal board.. You’ll get the hang of it.

Oh. There’s one more thing that popped in to my mind. Some people will probably remember when everyone wanted to modify their cheap pedals for true bypass? I have one question regarding that.. Did it make any of those pedals better than they were? I suppose there could be a case here and there where the TB’ing a pedal will help with the mythical tone sucking, but in general? Does it really help you to sound better?

I’ve had couple of pedals where i’ve heard the highs die when the effect was disengaged. I do think there is some psychoaural symptoms going on with that one too. What if the effect slightly boosts your highs? Then the buffered/bypasses signal would sound dull when disengaged. Have you used a/b testing to see if you can hear a difference between true bypassed signal and a buffered bypass?

In my opinion, the greatest solution to this age old, highly puzzling and opinion raising subject is the one we can today find in BJF Designed Mad Professor brand pedal, the Ruby Red Booster. This pedal has true bypass and buffered bypass switchable inside the enclosure. Ingenious. There should be more pedals with this option. Would be a big help for those who are designing or redesigning their pedal boards.

Colorless writings, part 4 – The Builder

Let’s take a look at me as a builder with a slightly longer article…

So you build pedals? How did it start?

Yes. I’ve built quite a few by now. It started out by accident. A happy accident. Back when i though myself as very average pedal user, still relying on my two channel amp for drive and clean. I wanted to try out up octaves, so i bought a cheap Joyo Ultimate Octave which is basically 1:1 clone of Fulltone’s unit of the same name. Just with cheaper build mentality. Wasn’t too happy with it, so i searched around the web for DIY build kits for upper ocatave. Found the General guitar gadgets and their Dan Armstrong Green Ringer replica kit and ordered it. Put the kit together and blam. Worked right of the bat. I just had the status indicator LED in reverse. But otherwise, success. The feeling you get from building something sucecssfully is unimaginable. Of course i started to look for that natural high again and found german Musikding store. Bought and built couple more kits for Si Fuzz Face, Super Hard-On booster and Red Llama. Success again. Only kit i couldn’t get to work was GGG’s LPB1. I still have that board somewhere in the back of my closet. I bet i could now debug and bring it back to life quite easily. But somehow i think i need to have it as a reminder that mistakes will always happen.

After couple of kits, i found couple of excellent websites that published stripboard layouts. Sabrotone.com by norwegian enthusiast Harald Sabro and the greatest of them all, tagboardeffects.blogspot.com, by british gentleman with screen name |v|ark (later on i got affiliated with the latter, but that’s a different story). The stripboard locked my interest after trying it out for the first time. The strips on basic boards are thicker than most traces on cheap commercial PCBs, making the connections more solid and durable. Well drawn stripboard layout will always beat the crap out of mediocre PCB designs in size and durability. I’ve built some boards on point-to-point tagboards and turretboards as well. Those are really good board materials, but they do limit the design complexity to very small circuits, or the final circuit won’t fit to any box that’s reasonably sized. Issue in this is that i rather use as small enclosure as possible. I’ve build more printed boards later on too, but i still tend to prefer stripboard for its solid connections and reasonable space requirements for small and medium sized circuits.

Sounds easy. Is there more to building than just reading ready instructions and basic soldering skills?

Yes and no. Like Indyguitarist once said, the electronics theory is not necesserily needed to build a great pedal. That is true. Simply following instructions will give basic knowledge of what the components are and what they do. Resistors and capacitors? What do they do in a circuit? Oh, and the switch. Do you know how 3PDT switch works? It should have this thing called on-on configuration, but it has 9 pins. How about the pot. Do you know how the pots work? These should be variable resistors, but they have 3 lugs. Knowing how these things work will make your life a whole lot easier. In addition to knowing the components, the debugging is another crucial skill. Soldering and reading instructions should be walk in a park for almost anyone – but getting your non-functional circuit to run is quite a different thing. On some debugging occasions when i can hear where the problem is just by listening to the circuit. Makes me smile. For a first timer, there just simply isn’t a chance of that happening. Novice debugger should know how to use a multimeter and how to construct an audio probe. With those two things at hand, one should be able to tell where the problem is. Quite often the problem is in the build and not the documentation. Almost always. If not always. All the documentation is created by people, which means that there is always a possibility of an error in there. All components are created by people. Same thing applies here. One should also remember that a faulty component is way more rare occasion than a error in build itself.

First time builders may have difficulty in separating the different parts of the pedal. The standard true bypass switching is usually completely different thing from the circuit itself. One should never solder the switching and ultimately the box to the circuit if one isn’t sure about if the circuit is working right. Debugging a sort-of completed build is a lot more painful than debugging the circuit board without switching and the box.

In general, debugging is a crucial skill that one can only learn by doing it. A lot. At the moment i can safely say that i can repair almost any broken analog pedal with through hole components – even without a schematic.

Do you build just clones or original circuits too?

Both. Building “clones” ia a way to start out. We could talk for a few hours about these “clones” and whether they are really clones. The computer you’re reading this is probably a clone of someone else’s work. Most of the pedals you will ever play are just “clones”. As the transistor can be hooked up in just couple of different ways, there isn’t a lot opportunities to do something completely profound that hasn’t been done before. Saddest examples i can think of are the Big Name builders that rip off tubescreamer and threaten to sue anyone trying to reverse engineer their “work”. There have been so many examples that i don’t want to dig into that. Reminds me of a quote on Dan Armstrong dot org. (Whole site is something that i’d recommend everyone interested in pedals should read…) “At one point, according to Dan “an MXR® rep tried out the Blue Clipper at a NAMM show and was amazed, not only of the sound we got out of it, but also how we managed to fit everything into such a small package”. Dan continues stating ” not too long after that they more/less copied the Clipper and went on to produce the ‘Distortion Plus’®, which was their version of the Clipper, but it wasn’t as smooth as ours”.

 When I asked Dan about all the copying that was going on he replied “well, it’s true that many copied our work or our ideas, but it’s also true that we borrowed ideas from others as well. The Green Ringer & Red Ranger, for instance are built on the ideas of others. We just made it so that the effects work the way they should have. That was our goal all along – to make effects that work right. There was a lot of copying going on, I know. The effects market was really nothing more than a bunch of beggers and thieves, all building off one anothers work. The trick was to get the effects working and sounding right – then they sold”.

No matter how hard someone tries to tell you anything different – all the circuits ever made are copies of another circuits. The real value comes from usability, quality and truly, from the effect working and sounding right. Dan’s words tell us that the classic MXR Dist+ is nothing more but MXR’s attempt to recreate Blue Clipper. It surely doesn’t sound like the Clipper, but it is good…

I’ve drawn quite a few sketches of different circuit ideas and some of those have made it to the “production”. How original are those? Others more and others less. All of them still use semiconductors as buffers and/or amplifiers, diodes for hard or soft clipping, etc. The basic stuff.

None of this is a rocket science. Anyone could learn how to build a pedal. I’m definitely not saying that everyone should. Dickehead pedal builder is probably a dickhead in all the other aspects of life too.  Who i think should be a pedal builder? Number of attributes may apply here. Anyone with humility and stamina to understand what he/she is doing and why. Is it only to make money or is it for the greater good? Can’t say. I’m doing this for personal gain, which translates to growth of my own knowledge of how the universe works. In this case the universe being the best possible sound i can strum off from my guitar. If you think you can be a respected builder without being a dick about it, you are more than welcome to try it out. The best practices will shape up along the way, so don’t expect to become new Mr. Mathews overnight.

Are going to be release more new models?

Definitely. My sketchbooks are filling up and every now and then i do find the time to try out some things that are interesting to me. Can’t say anything certain about the future, but i think there is a chance of me turning to professional builder some day. If everything works out perfectly, that may be true in a few years. I don’t think i’ll be able to make a million with guitar effect circuits – but then again, that’s not what i’m aiming for. My ultimate goal would be to create such pedals, that the users want to use stage and on recordings they make. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m not here to create incorporeal or intellectual property or to make a quick buck. Right now i’m here to try out new things and share what i’ve learned. Can’t really say what the world will look like in five years. I’m not even interested in that.

Colorless writings, part 3 – The Madness

Third part of these articles takes a look on the madness that eats up every tone freak person.

Madness? What are you talking about?

Dealing with used gear, guitars, effect, amps, you name it, you’ll need to be in contact with the people who are more or less tone freaks. It is rare that you can buy or sell a pedal from someone who doesn’t know what he/she is buying or selling. Those occasions are usually benefitting me and all the others who know their stuff. But these moments are rare. I’ve met people who are 10 years (or more) younger than me that list hundreds of instruments they’ve tried and used to own. I’ve met older people with spark ignited after they have turned 50. There’s one thing common with these people and me. All of us are on the hunt for sounds and nuances that are new to us. We all are on the hunt for that exact tone that may not even exist. There won’t ever be a person who has played with every single stompbox design ever released.  Every piece of the puzzle affects every other piece. To be more exact, there are basically four common variables:  Guitar, Effects/Pedals, Amplifier and the Cabinet

We could add cables to the mix, but unless you are not using the cheapest cables that came with your sister’s karaoke set, the audible difference can be debated for a long time. I mean that if you’re using good basic cables, you’re going to be fine and you don’t have to bother yourself with that. Back to the variables. Change one item in that chain, and the overall tone will change. You’ll be able to hear the differences. Always. That’s why i think most of the pedal demos are just wrong. You might get the idea what is happening, but you won’t have any real surface to the sound before you’ve played the pedal with your own  gear. Commercial instances who make the demos are usually trying to sell more stuff they have on stock, so the demo should sound good. When was the last time you saw a stomp box demo that was truly and constructively critical about the product? I surely can’t remember seeing one.

Someone could write an article about his hunt and catch, but then again, that article would only cover the hunt for his/her preferences. Some people even hunt the existing tones. Some are deliberately trying to match D. Dimebag, B. Corgan, J. Mascis, S.R. Vaughn, Slash, EVH and so on. To be honest, i feel slightly sorry for these guys spending massive ammounts of money to nail the sound that already exists. I also feel slightly sorry for myself and rest of the world who are trying to nail what they think will be the greatest tone ever – spending massive amounts of money trying to get there.

This is where the madness steps in. May the goal be whatever, the gear that needs to be tested to get there will always be a lot. Not to mention that human mind is pretty stupid thing. If you eat oatmeal every morning with peaches, you’re going to end up hating both in just a few years. There is always that one little thing that could work and/or sound just a little better or different. This is the main reason why we need pedals.

So the madness is the hunt for tone?

Basically no.  Not everyone playing a guitar/bass is affected by the consuming mental phenomena. But it turns to madness when you have more than 50 pedals, more than 20 guitars or more than five vacuum tube amps. We are called hoarders in some parts of the society. Some people will even go deeper than that. Like myself, i want to understand how and why the tone sounds like it does. I need to understand it. In some cases i might even trust my knowledge of electronics theory more than my own ears. That’s what makes this a madness. And the endless yearning for more of unexplored tones.

I can’t take myself too seriously. If i did i’d be already too deep – past the point of no return. Some people will always collect automobiles and some get their kicks from collecting stamps or vinyl records. I find my inner peace from electric guitars and sounds created with pedals, amps and those guitars. Yes it does interfere with my everyday life. Just as much as my everyday life interferes with my electronics. Once you are too deep, you’ll know it. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, but once you’re in there – you’ll know what i’m talking about.

Ah. I think i get it. The madness is when you don’t care about anything else but the tone?

Now we’re getting closer. In the past i watched TV. In the past i jogged considerably long distances. In the past i needed to get drunk way too often. I may be getting fatter and out of shape, but i really don’t care. Sometimes i even forget to eat. All of this because i do my best to get even deeper in the understanding of tone. I’ve been at this for a few years and i’m still learning new things every day. Not a day goes by that i don’t think about this stuff. It is my stuff. I live and breathe it. It is my sound.

I just happen to know that this is the chosen way of life to others too. None of us will ever be able to verbally express why this sound like that and why that sounds like this. We all just know it by heart and by gut feeling. When we rather spent our last pennies on rare 70’s pedal than get our fridges full to support our bodily functions for the next three weeks – that’s when it goes past the limit. That’s when we’re in the zone. That’s the madness. Couldn’t say that i didn’t like it here.

Colorless writings, part 2 – The Collector

Second article in this series. I’ll be asking myself questions about collecting these damn things.

Why are you collecting guitar effect pedals?

Well. I guess i’ve been sort of an addict to something for all my life. I decided that ~1250 title record shelf should be enough as a personal library. To some, that’s peanuts. But i was collecting records a few years ago. Until i started to build pedals myself. I built couple of kits that i purchased and most of them worked right off the bat. All of the sudden i noticed that i simply forgot to buy vinyls and cds and spent most of my money on components for pedals. By that time i used to have something like five to ten factory made pedals for my use. And i was building a lot. As i was building pedals for friends, i started to get some factory made stuff in trade.

I’ve been interested in pedals for a long time. For some reason that interested got a bit out of hand later on. Can’t remember my very first own pedal (TS5 or Zoom multieffect monster), but the first i bought with my own money, and really loved was Schaller tremolo. That was somewhere in the year 1999. Had to sell it later on, but many others followed. And got sold. For a very long time i only saw distortion as any distortion, tremolo as any tremolo, delay as any delay and so on. The biggest difference was the controls. I think i was the average pedal user back then. Only through building i became aware of the drastic tonal differences between designs.

I started to request pedals in exchange for pedals that i had built. Of course i had to open every last one of them open to see how these were made. To study them. If the schematic for a design was around the internet – that, in addition to hands on feel to the sound gave me good gut feeling why something on the circuit sounded the way it did. All of it started to make more and more sense. I do not know everything i want to know about electronics, but i now have these gut feelings about many things. Most of my correct assumptions are correct due to experience, not from books or studying.

Back to the question… I do value other boxes more than i value others. Through collecting pedals that i find interesting, i can get a better glimpse of the design and how it sounds. To collect pedals is to learn about them. Sort of like collecting butterflies and learning about biology – if you excuse my super lame figure of speech.

Why you chose to collect the brands you collect? 

The brands are what they are and those are selected by coincidence. I don’t care that much for brands as i do for interesting designs. Some manufacturers just tend to have more interesting stuff on their catalogue than others. Some brands are appealing, and i’ve started on few, but sold all of them quickly if the overall experience has been bad. Like Dunlop made MXRs. I had a few of those (Phase 90, Dist+, 78 Badass dist, Bluebox, Dyna Comp…). But all of them sounded just bad, even those were/are exactly the same as the old, original MXRs – at least topologically and by components. All of those felt and sounded arrogant to me. Only unit i kept is the Dist+, but that’s because i modded the hell out of it.

I’ve had some EHX boxes and still have couple. In my opinion, this is the brand that is nowadays simply overrated. Don’t get me wrong. Mr. Mathews is a genius who has developed many great original circuits. But in addition to those great circuits, he has developed a ton of crud which make up some of the most wanted effect pedals ever. The obvious ones like the Big Muff will always be part of my collection. Octave multiplexer should be mentioned here, as that’s probably the greatest down octave design i’ve had a pleasure to play with. But then.. There’s Memory Boy and Frequency analyzer to mention a few. If you don’t know what i’m talkin about, you should try to get your hands on either of those. I wasn’t the only one who thought my Memory Boy unit was broken…

Where Dunlop made MXRs feel arrogant, most of the EHX boxes feel just wrong.

I’ve always liked Danelectro pedals because of their appearance. First Dano i ever had was the Dan-Echo (unit got sold later on, and i’m looking to score one for cheap at the moment). Which led to finding interest in other Dano boxes as well.

My main collectible brands are Ibanez, Danelectro and DOD. I have mixed feelings about Boss/Roland, and my interest toward Marshall effects has peaked recently. I really don’t have a clue what my collection will be like in a few years. If get fed up with some brand, i might just sell them all.

Aren’t those cheap plastic things just bad?

Oh you mean the Ibanez Soundtanks and Dano minis+Fabs.. Well. Not necesserily. There are some that i wouldn’t call good, but the rest. You’d be surprised. 80’s cheapo will have very different price range today. If the circuit design is good, who cares about the outer shell? This may sound like some hippie “inner beuty” crap, but there is some truth to it. Besides, no matter what the quality of the enclosure may be, almost every repair job i’ve done has involved with something that isn’t caused by the enclosure. Nor the plastic jacks. Nor the “cheap” pots. Actually, most pot replacement jobs i’ve done have been with the ones that are considered to be high quality and endorsed by boutique builders world wide.

You want to get the best for a reasonable price, don’t you? Everyone does. That’s why manufacturers create series that are cheap, but offer the sound you are after – and because you buy them for the price. If no one buys certain design, that design will eventually vanish.

But generally speaking. Bad? Compared to what?

Colorless writings, part 1 – The Dark Ages

After each 10 or so pedal posts, i might try writing something different on the subject for a change. On this series of articles, i ask myself questions about some stuff i’ve been thinking. All these notes are based on my personal heresy and opinions. My articles should never be looked as hard facts. I try to keep these within or close to 1000 words, so you don’t get exhausted with my sub-standard english. Here’s the first article, taking a look at the “Dark Ages” of guitar effect pedals.

Why did we see a decline in effect sales and seemingly, in quality in the latter half of the 1980s?

I think the quality issue was never there. Of course some companies went with the money and their business sense instead of thinking things through musical perspective – but that’s the thing that is still happening every day. Now think what happen to the amplifiers after the ’70s. The solid state amplifiers were all the rage and shops just had to throw all their Voxes away, as no one would buy them. Have you ever played a pedal through solid state amp? Of course you have. Every guitar player has played with a solid state amp. No matter how well it is made, it will always (and i mean Always) lose the battle with tube amps. Don’t get me wrong. I’m using one solid state head quite often myself. Solid state still doesn’t capture the soft compression and the dynamics of the tubes. Digital modelling amplifiers may do that, but have you tried boosting the preamp of the digital modelling amplifier with DOD OD250 or ZVex Super Hard-On? There is a reason why all the guitarists playing a lot all still use vacuum tube amps. And all of them will, until the end of time. Debate on tube/solid state is not the issue here, but you can think for a second what your pedals sounds like with Marshall JCM800 in comparison to Marshall Valvestate, both from the same year, for the sake of argument, let’s say 1989. In this hypothesis, let’s take on some pedal that is not supposed to be any good. Ibanez TM5 Thrashmetal, for example. Some of you might have played your Epiphone Les Pauls with Valvestate amp and TM5. You will then know that the combination sucks ass. While valvestate is a hybrid, capable of taking higher/louder signals in, the distorted signal that hits the current amplifier after the preamp will still sound dull and not dynamic at all. Now, take the same guitar and the same pedal. Plug them into JCM800. With similar settings, you’ll hear the dynamics of the way you’re playing. The same dynamics that are completely lost in the Valvestate.

I do believe that many of the pedals from 80s to 90s went “undiscovered” for more than 20 years because of the amplifiers everyone had at home. Why would you buy a pedal that makes your otherwise reasonable sounding amplifier sound bad? No you wouldn’t. But the same pedal will sound amazing with proper amplifier.

Valvestate is a good amp in many ways when compared to what people really had back in those days. Marshall released small practice amps under Park brand, and every other brand had their small solid state amp for sale. All of them sounding like crap. Many manufacturers even lost their faces because of this development. Think of VOX Valvetronix hybrids that came out around year 2000.

When tube amps started their renaissance, people found out that the Marshall Bluesbreaker they had in their closet for 20 years sounded just amazing. They could have bought those for five euros back in 2001, or had one since they bought it new. Just couldn’t have sold it to anyone as everyone else had the same, bad sounding amplifier.

I believe that this was the cause of the decline. Not the quality. Not the choices pedal companies made back then. Not anything else. Just a pie chart showing how much more solid state amps were sold compared to tube amps.

But there were bad designs and breakable switches in that era!

Of course there were. But show me just one year when no company or no private builder released a pedal that was bad? Bigger companies release a lot of designs. Some of those will always be bad. Some of the designs i’ve come up with are bad. It’s been like that since forever. Stop and think of Hornby Skewes Shatterbox. Is that a good pedal design? How about Gretsch Controfuzz? There are many, many more. From the very first to the design that hits effectsdatabase today. There’s always been bad designs. The main reason why you affiliate 80s and 90s with bad designs doesn’t come from the designs. Broken footswitch? Oh boy. From day one, so many boxes have had switches that break with heavy use. And still do.

If all the 80s were only bad designs, why do we still have tons and tons of classic circuits from that era? Even a few hard commercial flops have found their way to be the rare gems and many of those can be heard on great albums of today. Some very cheap, mass produced boxes have already gathered value in hundreds of euros/dollars. Like many of the US made DODs. Damn i miss the days when you could score basically any of the most innovating DODs for pocket change. Even the worst box in original FX-series isn’t that bad (ok, there are exceptions…). Too bad the company was on its prime at the wrong time.

But why do you refer to that time as the Dark Ages if there’s no real reason for it?!

Yes there is. We lost original MXR, EHX went bankrupt, tens of others struggled with their designs and so on. Many manufacturers released cheaper and cheaper boxes to raise the profit margins.

May it be that i have never seen the pedals as a high profit business. Still the examples above tell you a story what happened. I know some people that still rely on their amplifiers dirt channels – the people who won’t never ever touch a pedal again. Their reason: The first encounters with pedals sucked.

In a nutshell. You think that 80’s boxes sound bad? They don’t. You’re just under that impression because you used those boxes with super sucky amplifiers back in the day.

The 80s did lots and lots of bad things to this world.

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